Global higher education analysis firm Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) has released in 2017 rankings of the world’s top universities for the study of Architecture & Built Environment. This year, for the seventh edition of the survey, QS has expanded the ranking to list the world’s top 200 schools, including institutions across all six inhabited continents.

For the third year in a row, MIT has topped the list, finishing ahead of the Bartlett School of Architecture and the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft). Read on for the full rankings.

The Chicago Architecture Biennial has announced the first exhibit that will on display during the event’s second edition from September 16 to January 7, 2018 – a contemporary reboot of one of architecture’s most well-known competitions, the Chicago Tribune tower design contest. Sixteen young architects from around the world will contribute new versions of the iconic skyscraper that will be displayed as a series of 16-foot-tall architectural models in the Chicago Cultural Center, the Biennial’s main venue.

Global photography community and marketplace EyeEm has announced the winners of their Minimalist Architecture Photography Mission to find photos that best highlight “the beauty of minimalism in architecture.” Organized alongside art and design blog We and the Color, the competition saw photographers from across the globe submit over 45,000 images focusing on the color, lines, shapes, and compositions of contemporary, minimalist architecture.

From the entries, 20 images were selected as winners with a top 3 was chosen by German minimalist photographer Matthias Heiderich. Read on to see the full list of winners.

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Mies van der Rohe’s seminal Barcelona Pavilion is one of the most well-loved structures in the history of architecture, a de facto pilgrimage site for architects and architecture lovers around the world. Now, even those unable to make the trip have the opportunity to get a tour of the beautiful structure, thanks to a new virtual walkthrough produced by The Mies van der Rohe Foundation.

MVRDV has released plans for a major revitalization of a former US army barracks in the Franklin Mitte neighborhood of Mannheim, Germany. The 41-hectare site will feature a slate of mixed-typology developments organized around a central green hill made from demolished barrack buildings and offering panoramic views of the new developments. Of those new buildings, four residential towers spelling out the word H-O-M-E will create a vibrant community of professionals and young local families.

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The Chicago Architecture Biennial has announced the list of participants invited to contribute to the event’s second edition, which will be held from September 16 to January 7, 2018 in Chicago. More than 100 architecture firms and artists have been selected by 2017 artistic directors Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee, founders of Los Angeles–based Johnston Marklee, to design exhibitions that will be displayed at the Chicago Cultural Center and throughout the city.

“Our goal for the 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial is to continue to build on the themes and ideas presented in the first edition,” explained Johnston and Lee. “We hope to examine, through the work of the chosen participants, the continuous engagement with questions of history and architecture as an evolutionary practice.”

Despite the rush of new technologies available to architects to express their designs, the humble art of hand-drawing is still alive and well. And when sketching are drafting are done well enough, they can become their own artifacts for inspiring architectural thought.

The work of architecture student Adelina Gareeva is one such example. Studying at Kazan State University of Architecture and Engineering (KSUAE) in Russia, Gareeva produces incredibly detailed architectural drawings, from carefully constructed perspective drawings of St. Basil’s Cathedral, to travel sketches to more abstract architectural compositions that draw similarities to Zaha Hadid’s Suprematist paintings or the Cubist works of Georges Braques. Check out some of her best sketches below.

The tragedy of architecture is how stupid architects are... we spend too much time trying to convince people to do things they don’t want to do. That really lowers the level of the discussion, I think.

In this video from the Louisiana Channel, Canadian architect Adam Caruso, founding partner of London-based Caruso St John, provides his take on the current climate of the architectural profession and the influences driving his own personal architectural philosophy. With his firm, Caruso has led the design of numerous art institutions, including the 2016 RIBA Stirling Prize winning Newport Street Gallery in London, that respond to “a deeper idea of place, of the history and culture of the place and how you read it today.

Construction on Herzog & de Meuron’s 160 Leroy condominium tower in New York’s West Village has nearly topped out, with 12 of its planned 15 floors now complete. The design, inspired by the great Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, features a curved concrete and glass facade and contains 57 luxury condos ranging in price from $3.1 to $48.5 million.

UNStudio has been selected as the winners of an international competition to design a new mixed-use development on the site of the former Deutsche Bank offices in Frankfurt, Germany. Selected to complete the urban strategy for the district last March, UNStudio has now been unanimously selected to carry out the architectural redevelopment of the site, beating out third prize proposals from the teams of Dudler / Jahn and MSW / Snøhetta, and an honorable mention from Christoph Mäckler / CoopHimmelblau.

The new mixed-use development will consist of four high-rise towers ascending from a multi-story plinth in the heart of the city. The project includes space for retail, restaurants and hotels, as well as a full range of residential accommodation. The four towers, rising up to 228 meters (748 feet) high, will serve as a new landmark on the Frankfurt skyline.

New images of BIG and Heatherwick Studio’s proposed Google campus in Mountain View California have been revealed in planning documents presented to the city last month. Initially announced in 2015, the project has seen several revisions after first running into difficulty with the city planning board, and then after swapping sites with fellow tech giant LinkedIn. The latest iteration, the 18.6-acre Charleston East campus, features a 2-story, 595,000-square-foot building topped with a flowing, tent-like canopy.

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The La Défense district of Paris has announced the proposal of seven new skyscrapers by top architects including Ateliers Jean Nouvel, Foster + Partners and Christian de Portzamparc in an attempt to lure business to the city during a time of economic upheaval in the European markets.

All planned for completion no later than 2022, the new buildings would target international businessmen and researchers, especially those displaced following the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union.

New renderings have been revealed of Studio Gang’s Solar Carve Tower, located at 40 10th Avenue along the High Line in New York City, as the project gets set to begin construction. Initially conceived by the architects in 2012, the tower was presented to New York’s Board of Standards and Appeals on four occasions before finally receiving planning approval in November 2015. In the new images, the building’s interiors and roof terrace are seen for the first time, as well as its relationship to the nearby Pier 55, the proposed park along the Hudson Waterfront designed by Heatherwick Studio.

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Eight “Winter Stations” have been installed along Toronto’s beachfront, injecting new life into the shoreline during the Canadian city’s winter months. Completed as a result of the annual Winter Stations design competition, the eight projects responded to this year’s theme of “Catalyst,” which sought installations that “open up the waterfront landscape and reinvent the space for visitors” while considering how materials may be repurposed or reused for future iterations.

Plans for 555 Howard, a mixed-use hotel and residential tower to be located in San Francisco’s Transbay neighborhood, have been revealed by the city’s Planning Department. Designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop for developer Pacific Eagle, the 36-story tower would house 69 residential units and 255 hotel rooms, as well as a publicly-accessible open-air rooftop terrace. The project represents Piano’s second project in the city, following 2008’s California Academy of Sciences.

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Construction on Kengo Kuma’s V&A Museum Dundee is well underway, with the structure’s inclined concrete walls already beginning to take shape. This new video produced by the V&A Museum shows the latest progress of the building, with commentary from several figures working on the project, including Kuma himself.

Videos

From giant squids to sunken treasure, the ocean has a way of hiding secrets better than any other place on Earth – so why not hide your personal information down there too?

That scenario may soon be our reality, as Microsoft has unveiled that, for the past year and a half, they have been testing a prototype data center that is completely submerged underwater. Devised by Microsoft engineer Sean James, the theory argues that placing the massive server farms underwater could dramatically reduce both construction and cooling costs, as well as provide a reliable source of renewable energy and even improve their performance.

For nearly 100 years, the JL Hudson's Department Store in downtown Detroit stood as a mecca of shopping – the 25-story structure at one point holding the record for world’s tallest retail building. Then in 1983, following a downturn of the Detroit economy, the department store was closed. Its implosion followed in 1998. In the years since, the important site has laid mainly vacant, save for an underground parking structure inserted into the store’s former underground retail levels. But now, plans have been revealed to return the site to its former glory.

Announced yesterday by Detroit-based development group Bedrock, the site is set to receive a brand new 1.2 million-square-foot development designed by SHoP Architects and consisting of a nine-story retail podium and a 52-story, 734-foot tower that would claim the title of Detroit’s tallest building.

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